Franz Liszt - Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth [all piano versions]

0:00 - Elégie pour piano seul, 5:34 - Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth, 12:10 - Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth, 18:53 - Feuille d’album No. 2, 24:39 - Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth, It has been remarked how Liszt kept returning to his song Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth, whose original text reflects the joy of Liszt’s very rare experience of holidaying on the Rhine and staying in the cloisters on the island of Nonnenwerth, en famille with Marie d’Agoult and their children in the early 1840s. Here is offered the most elusive of the many versions for solo piano, the first version, which Liszt gave the rather bulky title Élégie pour piano seul—which he later adopted as a subtitle, retaining as title that of the song. This version was published in 1843, and may date from soon after the completion of the original song in 1841 at the latest. The second version of Liszt’s beloved Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth (‘The Nonnenwerth Cloister’) is effectively two versions in one, because its more florid alternative text proceeds alongside the main text for much of the work, printed together on four staves. The two texts are both offered here because of their great divergence in letter and spirit, even though the general air of melancholy in the rueful recollection of happier times – implied in the original song and in the occasion of its conception – permeates both. This Feuille d’Album was published and enjoyed a broad circulation in Liszt’s lifetime. The theme of the A minor piece is the third of the four transcriptions of Liszt’s excellent song Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth. Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth was something of an obsession with Liszt. At the last count, beginning around 1841 and continuing until the last years of his life, he seems to have made three versions of the song to Lichnowsky’s poem about the cloisters on the island in the Rhine, an Élegie with a different text over the same music, four versions of it for solo piano, the second of these with an alternative reading effectively making version number five, just one version for piano duet, and versions for violin or cello and piano, most of which can be readily run to ground today by the diligent collector. The present piano version is the last, and the simple song has become a nostalgic reflection upon happier times and gives rise to the speculation that, in old age, Liszt mused upon one of the happiest periods of his life when he and the Countess d’Agoult holidayed on the island of Nonnenwerth with their children Blandine, Cosima and Daniel in the summers of 1841–43—some of the terribly few occasions when that extraordinary family was united. (Howard) Pf: Joel Hastings (, ii, ii/a, iii) Pf: Clemens Muller ()